Christmas Travel Misery

It was never a good idea and it seems that climate change is making it worse. Has it occurred to anyone that the more fuel we burn going away at Christmas, the more we are likely to upset the weather and ground all the planes?

Some countries tailor their exodus to the weather. In summer they go to the seaside and in winter they take to their skies. No weather problems, in fact it’s perfect. In temperate Britain it’s never hot enough to be sure of a beach holiday in summer or cold enough to ensure winter sports in the winter. Perhaps if we hang on a bit we’ll be able to make the change if winters carry on becoming longer and colder. Still, on the bright side, we don’t have many earthquakes, tsunamis, erupting volcanoes or other natural disasters so perhaps we should be happy sitting on a cold damp beach in August.

The solution of course was worked out a while ago by the Rugby Football League. Fed up with the fixture list being disrupted and stretching out into the warmer weather (amongst other reasons) they simply moved the festival from winter to summer. Why not do the same with Christmas? There’s no doctrinal reason for the Christmas Day to be on 25 December. (Here I lay myself open to a comment from ratzinger@vaticancity.) The Christians cleverly hijacked the Pagan festival of Yule, which at least needed by its nature to be at the turn of the year when the days again started to lengthen again, and made it their own. Now that they’ve established themselves a bit and gained some confidence maybe the Christians can give the festival back to its original owners and put theirs at a more temperate time of year. But then, I hear you say, Christmas is more of a secular fest these days and, what about the Orthodox chaps? They have theirs in January when the big rush is over. Would they be happy?

I favour celebrating them all whenever they fall. Diwali, Hanukkah, Eid, Yule and the Celtic festivals. But the tradition that they all have of celebrating them amongst the family has been made difficult as we all tend to move about more. Maybe we’ll have to accept that we can’t all meet up every year like we used to but make the best of it wherever we happen to be.